Claude is about to watermark the text

you generate with AI. So today I'll

share with you everything you need to

know and what you can do about it. If

you're new, my name is Jay. I've been in

AI since my masters in data science and

now I'm running my own AI business and

one of the largest communities in the

space globally. Let's get straight to

it. So here's the four things that I

want to cover. When will this watermark

start to happen? Who will it affect? How

will the watermark actually be

implemented? And what you should be

doing about it. So when is this

happening? Well, the short of it is that

this watermark will be applied by models

launched after August 2. So since

Entropic hasn't launched a model yet

since that date, that means it's not yet

live. But say when Fable 5.1 or Opus 5.1

is launched, then they will most likely

start applying that watermark. Now, just

a note regarding the older models, as

per Entropics official documentation,

they did mention that they have plans to

rework the older models so that they

will also add watermarking for them as

well. But as of right now, that is also

not yet live. Now, who is this going to

affect? Now, because Entropic is

applying the watermark because of the EU

AI act, some people might think that

this will only apply to Europe. But

remember, since the watermark will be

applied at the model level, it's much

more likely that everyone globally will

have this watermark. Now, apart from the

scope, I think what's also important to

realize is that it is not just entropic

who signed this EU AI act. So if you

look at the European Commission's

official article here published around

the end of July, they mention here that

by the end of that month around 190

organizations already signed this act

and some big names here include of

course Entropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft

and OpenAI. So right now Claude is

making the news with regard to this

watermark. But pretty soon it's likely

that all of these AI labs will implement

some sort of watermarking for the text

that they generate as well. Now how

exactly is this invisible watermark

going to be applied? Now, this can get

technical depending on how much detail

you want, but I do think it's still

useful to get an idea of how it works.

And the best reference for this is this

official FAQ page from Entropic, which

I've also read true. And what they made

sure to clarify here is that it's not

going to be a simple hidden character

watermark that some people might think.

So, it's definitely not special

characters or extra spaces because

obviously that would be pretty easy to

strip as a watermark if they were using

that. So rather the method that they're

using is more similar to a pattern-based

watermarking is how I like to describe

it. Because if you go back to Entropic's

documentation here, they're saying their

exact methodology is a version of the

scent ID text approach which is

originally from Google. And this scent

ID watermark is actually simpler to

understand when you draw a parallel on

how it's applied for images. Because for

images, let's say you have this picture

of a landscape. All that image really is

is a collection of pixels, right? So

really small squares that if you zoom in

you'll be able to see them. So what the

synth ID watermark does is that it

nudges some of those pixels so that

their color is slightly altered but the

change in the color is so tiny that only

computers can really detect it but the

human eye cannot. But since the

watermark is embedded in the pixels

themselves even if let's say you copy

this image and you paste it elsewhere

then that watermark will travel with it.

And so the send ID for text actually

follows a similar principle where let's

say you have an essay written by Claude.

What it will do is it will nudge some of

its word choices towards a certain

direction to apply the pattern-based

watermark. And a good example of this is

this illustration by Tariq, who's one of

the more well-known engineers at

Entropic. And he's basically showing

here how the text will differ, where the

watermark is applied versus text where

it isn't implemented. And if we take one

example there just to make this as

simple as it can be. Whenever you send a

prompt to claude like this question on

what is Isaac Newton's most important

book when it writes a response like this

what it actually does under the hood is

just list down the most probable words

in response to that question. And in

this illustration the response without

the watermark says that Isaac Newton's

best known work is the Principia while

the one with the watermark says Isaac

Newton's most famous work is the

Principia. So practically means the same

thing. But the difference here in the

watermark version is how those words are

selected. And when it comes to word

selection, Entropic mentions this useful

analogy where if you imagine you're

playing a game like Monopoly where your

next turn or in this case, your next

word choice is decided by the rolling of

a dice. They're saying that instead of

rolling the dice to get this randomness,

we decided to just use the digits of pi.

So if you go back to this example, when

it came to this word choice, let's say

that dice landed on a one and that

corresponded to the word best known. And

so that was what was used in the final

response. But in this response with the

watermark, the die will look something

more like this where right now we're

just using pi as an example. But

obviously we don't know the exact key

that entropic will be using. But what

entropic is saying is if you randomly

select from these numbers and say it

lands on five and that corresponds to

most famous as the phrase which is the

one that was used in the final watermark

text. Then for all intents and purposes

as per them, it's still random. The

meaning is still supposedly maintained,

but the difference is you can reverse

engineer if the randomizer that was used

was just this ordinary die or if it was

Entropics watermark key. So because of

this methodology for the watermark,

there are some valid questions that

people are asking. And a big one is will

this affect word and code quality? Now

the real answer to that is we don't yet

know for sure until it is live. But it

is useful to know that in the original

synth ID text paper which is the

inspiration of entropic when it comes to

this method that Google already tested

this with their users and they found

that people weren't really able to

notice the difference. In that same

article, they also included this section

around code. And what Entropic is saying

here is that the watermarking takes

advantage of decisions where either

choice of a word would be equally good

so that the meaning of the whole thing

doesn't change. But where an exact

output is required, which is more common

when it comes to coding, then the

watermark isn't applied. So for example,

if the model has written 2 plus 2

equals, then it will just say four as

the answer and the nudge of the

watermark wouldn't be applied for this

case. And so for the same reason code

which in many cases has to be exact has

generally less watermarking than other

forms of text. But again the watermark

is not yet live and so we're just basing

this from the article that entropic has

published. Another scenario is let's say

if you write an essay and then you pass

it along to AI to edit it is it now then

watermark. So for this one it really

depends on how much change you ask the

AI to make. Because for example, if you

just have it add punctuations or just

fix the formatting of your essay to

capitalize some letters, then claude

won't really have the space to change

the words, right? And apply those

watermarks. But if you ask it to

paraphrase the whole thing, then it can

change the words and it will be able to

apply that pattern-based watermark that

we talked about. And then on a similar

note, if you want to know how to remove

the watermark, the basic principle is

the more that you paraphrase a text that

was given to you by AI, then the more

likely it is that you are erasing quote

unquote the watermark. So what is it now

that we should do? Well, first of all,

watching this video and just being aware

of this is already a good step for you.

I probably wouldn't generally advise

people to switch away from cloud just

for this one exact reason. You can

switch away from cloud because of other

reasons, but because other AI labs will

likely implement something like this,

then overhauling your systems away from

cloud just because of this one news is

probably not going to be the best move

for you. It's also important to note

that no cloud model as of the time of

this recording has the watermark yet.

And there's also no tool yet to detect

if a given set of text has that

watermark or not. Although Entropic did

mention that they will launch a tool

like that sometime in the near future.

But if it's really important for you not

to be accused of using AI generated text

for your work, then one of the best

things you can do is to review your

agents work, which is probably good

practice regardless of the watermark

existing or not. I hope that was

informative and if it is, then consider

subscribing because that helps me a lot

to put out more educational content like

this. And I'll see you all next time.

Thanks.